


I Give You Real Tough Love

by Carmenlire



Series: Beautiful and Damned [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Eventual Happy Ending, Friends With Benefits, M/M, POV Magnus Bane, Personal Growth, Post-Break Up, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:09:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25700362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmenlire/pseuds/Carmenlire
Summary: He can’t take another afternoon of loving Alec and seeing nothing but bored interest in return.Hearing a card at the door, he turns around just in time to meet Alec’s eyes. Knowing that he can’t drag this out or he’ll chicken out again, Magnus smiles-- just a little, all he can manage-- and starts without preamble.“Alexander, we need to talk.”
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Beautiful and Damned [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861291
Comments: 16
Kudos: 187





	I Give You Real Tough Love

Magnus eyes Alec and can’t stop the question from slipping past numb lips. And he tries, God how he tries. It feels like he’s been biting his tongue for weeks now, for so long that it’s a wonder blood doesn’t pour from his mouth along with the stupidly weak question.

“What are we doing?”

He watches Alec’s hands as they hover over the keyboard and his eyes dart up to see if there’s even a hint of expression on that beautiful face. He’s disappointed but not particularly surprised to see nothing but the same blank wall he’s been fucking for a few months now.

Infuriatingly attractive and twice as stoic.

When Alec drawls, “Having fun,” in a voice that makes Magnus shudder even as he hates himself for it, Magnus wonders how much longer he can keep going before an asinine question isn’t the only thing slipping into the space between them, the space that feels a little claustrophobic for all it could be as wide as the goddamn Grand Canyon.

He swallows the bark of laughter at the cryptic answer, at the nonanswer, and as the sound of fingers flying over a laptop keyboard fill the silence, Magnus regains his composure that had felt, if even for a moment, like it was melting through his hands like sand. “Just a little stress relief between friends?”

It feels like glass sticks in his throat as he watches Alec answer without even deigning to look up. “Exactly.”

Making himself presentable again, he meets Alec’s eyes in the mirror as he absently folds his tie. “And when it’s not fun anymore?”

He promises himself it’s not delusion as he watches Alec’s gaze flicker for a second. “Then we stop.”

Magnus smiles and wonders if they’re both fools or if it’s him, just as it always seems to be.

Just Magnus and his goddamn foolish heart that can’t help but hope for things that have no chance of happening.

He can’t resist poking just a little more though and doesn’t fault himself for wanting to find something that lets him know Alec feels something for him-- maybe not as deeply, maybe not what he wants-- but _something_.

“No hard feelings?” He doesn’t know what he wants. Christ knows he doesn’t want Alec to lay prostrate at his feet, declaring his undying love. But Alexander’s a fickle bastard and no matter how hard he tries, Magnus can’t crack him.

It’s quickly becoming the most infuriating puzzle he’s ever tried to put together.

Alec echoes, “No hard feelings,” and Magnus doesn’t meet his eyes for the rest of the hour before they leave, separately, two strangers for all the warmth they give each other.

He leans over Alec, kisses a trail from that beautiful mouth down to a jaw that leaves him weak in the knees, over a neck where the scent of Alec’s cologne is warmest.

He’ll never tell him, doesn’t think his pride or heart could take the hit at this point, but Alec’s claws are sunk so deep into Magnus that he doesn’t know how he’ll bear it when this thing between them ends.

Because there’s no doubt. Magnus might be a fool but he’s realistic enough. It’s been six months and Alec’s still as impassive as he was the first night they met, both seeking distraction from the ennui that comes from being the youngest CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Losing himself in Alec-- as though there was ever a choice-- maybe Magnus bites down a little harder than intended. His breath catches at the sound Alec makes though, something high and desperate and Magnus needs to hear it again.

“Darling, you have no idea what you do to me,” he whispers and his teeth are sharp as he marks a trail on flushed skin. He tastes salt and it only makes him want more.

He wants to wreck Alec, his darling Alexander, if only in his own head.

There’s only the sounds of Alec under him, of their sharp breathing, until he hears Alec utter words that still him.

“Make it hurt,” Alec begs. Magnus isn’t sure what he does, is only aware of Alec so desperate and lovely before him but Alec’s insistent. “Want to feel you. Want to remember this.”

And God help Magnus, but he wants to hurt Alec. Just a little, just enough so that Alec remembers who he let see him like this, so that maybe when everything’s said and done, Alec will feel Magnus’s phantom touch and wonder.

It’s not nearly enough but if this is all he’ll have, then Magnus will be goddamned if he doesn’t take it and run.

It ends like most things, Magnus thinks to himself as he stares out over New York. It’s a city he knows like the back of his hand and he has the sudden, desperate wish to lose himself in it’s darkness and never see the light of day again.

With the way it feels like his heart is being slowly, agonizingly ground to a pulp, he figures he’s damned anyway.

The room is silent and as he waits for his Alec to arrive, he idly examines the room. Straightening a frame, nudging a magazine into alignment, he kills time.

In the back of his head, he wonders if he really has the guts to go through with it this time. The truth is, there have been a handful of times over as many weeks when he’s resolved to end this thing between them. It’s been close to a year that they’ve been fucking-- because that’s all it’s ever been and Magnus is painstakingly stripping away any and all flights of fancy that might like to think it was more than that.

There’s never been a look in Alec’s eye. There’s never been a special gentleness he’s only ever shown with Magnus, a sort of lazy affection that lit up those wonderful hazel eyes just often enough to make Magnus’s heart jump with hope.

No, Magnus is done deluding himself and hanging onto possibility that’s never been his to begin with. They had a mutually beneficial relationship and Magnus knows it’s run its course.

He can’t take another afternoon of loving Alec and seeing nothing but bored interest in return.

Hearing a card at the door, he turns around just in time to meet Alec’s eyes. Knowing that he can’t drag this out or he’ll chicken out again, Magnus smiles-- just a little, all he can manage-- and starts without preamble.

“Alexander, we need to talk.”

So focused on finally getting this done with so he can nurse his wounds and start putting the pieces of his heart back together, Magnus ploughs on. For the first time, he comes outright and says what he means-- no flirty rejoinder, no coy lead-up, just ripping off the band-aid.

“I think we should stop this, whatever this is.”

It’s cathartic until his heart starts beating again in the empty silence that follows. He swears he feels it hurting in his chest, aching behind his ribs.

All Alec offers is, “Okay.” 

Magnus bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood. Everything boiled down to one apathetic word. He wants to strangle Alec and maybe himself for falling for such a fucking bastard.

He barely hears Alec’s answer. His head is filled with white noise and distantly he thinks he might have said something meant to be chivalric but Magnus just feels like someone is taking a vegetable peeler to his heart.

He doesn’t know what he replies with only that he needs to get out of that room. He can’t be in the same space as Alexan--

Lightwood.

Ruthlessly, Magnus yanks his self control into place. They are nothing more than people who used to fuck. They might see each other at the odd gala, the occasional conference and it will mean nothing because Magnus will make sure of it.

It feels like he can’t breathe and Magnus prays his gasping is only in his head. He couldn’t take the indignity of Alec ever knowing that this meant so much more to Magnus than it did to him.

He’s so close to freedom, to escape, when Lightwood’s voice stills him. Not looking back, he barely hears the cause of his latest heartbreak ask why it’s all come crashing down.

And it’s not like Magnus can say that he’s fallen in love, that Alec had pushed and pulled in that carefully inscrutable way he possesses so that Magnus hadn’t even realized his heart was in danger until it had already been taken.

Magnus loves Alec and he can’t take the pain of knowing he’s nothing but a convenience in return.

He furiously thinks for a reason that won’t betray the depth of his feelings and folly and he lands on an answer that-- sharpened just right, lobbed very carefully-- should have all the effectiveness of a bomb detonating.

And the thing is, it’s even the truth.

“It’s not fun anymore,” he replies in a voice so cool he shivers himself and he leaves before Alec sees the cracks in his chest grow into chasms.

The light fairly stabs into his retinas and Magnus groans, swallows down bile as he whimpers very, very quietly.

His mouth tastes like something crawled into it and died. He’s sure there’s an empty bottle of bourbon somewhere in this hellhole.

Sitting up, he shudders and keeps still but it’s nothing to the way he freezes when he hears the sheets rustle behind him.

Goddamnit, he thinks blearily. Not another one.

It’s been a few weeks since he left Lightwood at the hotel. And since, he’s developed a penchant for losing himself in faceless strangers. It’s a good time until the morning comes and then Magnus vehemently despises himself so much he can hardly stand it.

He can’t keep doing this.

Magnus has always enjoyed a good time but that isn’t what this is. This is him drowning his sorrows in top shelf liquor and anyone willing enough to spend a few hours together.

He doesn’t like the person Alec’s turned him into. He doesn’t like who he’s allowing himself to be.

It’s not his best moment but Magnus feels his stomach lurch and lunges for the nearest wastebasket. He throws up his fucking guts and wants to die and to add final insult to injury, he’s buckass naked and not completely sure where the hell he even is.

After he’s done expending a kidney, he wipes his mouth, inelegantly and more than a little sloppily and laboriously gathers his clothes.

He gathers his phone, checking his wallet before shoving it into his pocket, and leaves the nondescript hotel room.

He doesn’t look back to see who he shared a bed with. He can’t remember a face and knows he never asked for a name.

It feels more than a little bit like fleeing but Magnus makes it back to his own loft and showers until he’s almost raw.

He keeps his promise though, the oath that was more hope than decision.

Building himself back up takes effort, considerably more than he thinks Alec deserves most days. But he has his friends and he has nothing better to do with his time when he’s not working so Magnus becomes whole again.

It’s a year later when he’s idly strolling through a bookstore. He’s taken the afternoon off to enjoy his own company-- something he had started to do in the aftermath of Lightwood-- and he feels better than he has in years. Since Lightwood, but since before him, too.

Magnus hasn’t always been the best at taking care of himself and the fiasco with Alec had shown him just how far he’d fallen. Alec hadn’t been the start but he’d been the brick that had brought his entire house of cards tumbling down.

He’s better now. It’s taken work but Magnus knows his worth and what he wants. Happy enough by himself, he’s learned to appreciate his own company in a way he had never been able to before.

Still.

When he sees Alec’s favorite book in the bookstore that gloomy afternoon, Magnus finds himself reaching out almost without thinking.

Alec had mentioned it in passing. The details are hazy now but it must’ve been when they were putting themselves back together after a lunch hour tryst.

It’s a romance and from the cover, it looks cheesy as hell. It’s not hard to remember the embarrassed little laugh Alec had let out as he’d admitted his favorite book wasn’t a business treatise or horribly written classic but a romance novel between an actor and a professor.

Magnus wonders if there’s anything there. He wonders, hopes that he could be friends with Alec. With distance comes hindsight and Magnus has thought a time or two that maybe it wasn’t delusion that had made Alec’s facade seem to crack every so often when they were together.

He could do with some new friends, Magnus thinks as he browses through the cookbooks. He trusts that he’s in a place to extend an olive branch-- and that if he’s wrong, he could leave Alec behind once and for all.

Frowning a little, he considers and rapidly dismisses any unintended consequences and pulls out his phone. Laughing a little at his screensaver of Madzie and Cat at their favorite ice cream shop, he opens his contacts and scrolls down to a number still familiar despite age.

There are a dozen messages he could send but he still has a flair for the dramatic.

_I miss you sometimes_.

Sunshine pours through sheer curtains that are practically useless, Magnus gripes to himself. Since he’s the one facing the windows and the bright sunrise, he thinks it only fair that he get to complain.

He opens his eyes just to roll them as he hears no pause at all in the snoring that sounds like a buzzsaw of their bedroom.

Turning over, he spares a moment-- or two or three-- to stare at Alec, his lovely Alexander before he snorts out a laugh.

His husband looks ridiculous and he’s grossed out to see a hint of drool in the corner of his mouth.

What an idiot, he thinks silently but full of mirth. _My idiot_.

It’s with a startled yelp that he’ll never admit to that Magnus finds himself practically hauled across the bed until he lands sprawled across Alec’s chest.

“I could feel you staring at me,” Alec murmurs, voice low in the early coolness. “Go back to sleep, babe. You can admire me when it’s not ass o’clock in the morning.”

Magnus thinks about a sharp retort but his brain seems disconnected at the rest of him because he just settles against Alec and lays a kiss over his heart.

He knows. He nauseates himself sometimes.

Still. He laughs a little, makes some noise of agreement, and smiles at the feel of Alec kissing the top of his head before laying back down, almost immediately dead to the world again.

The sound of his husband’s snores ring in his ear and there’s no other way he’d rather fall asleep, if he’s being honest.

Magnus knows he can live without Alec and is quite confident Alec would do just fine on his own. They grew apart and then grew back together and Magnus doesn’t mind admitting that he like it best like this-- him and Alec against the world.

Before all the world saving though, there’s sleep, Magnus decides as his eyes drift shut.

And if he’s really lucky, there might even be french toast.

The joys of domestic bliss, Magnus wonders to himself and lets Alec’s warmth lull him back to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on tumblr or twitter @carmenlire!


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